Mother Agnes Mariam – 22 February 2014, Update on Crisis in Syria

On 22 February 2014, AMRIS members had a SKYPE conversation with Mother Agnes, who was in Damascus at the time. Below is an abridged version of her update on the situation in Syria.

In her update, Mother Agnes refers to the shocking crimes of radical groups in Syria and speaks about their occupation of Adra, a town on the outskirts of Damascus.

This powerful video has a distressing scene of a beheading at the start which was filmed up at the castle “Krak de Chavalier” in the Wadi al Nasra (Valley of the Christians) region; however, the rest of the video is witness testimony from people who have escaped Adra, a town besieged by Jabhat al-Nushra. These testimonies give credence to the article from Mother. If people are troubled by seeing the beheading, start at 5.40 min before viewing.

The situation in Syria is getting worse in terms of the dynamic of destruction. The grinding into dust of Syrian resources is continuing.

Those who commit this destruction seem to be fearless and they no longer pretend to justify it. There is no more talk of ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’. The killing and destruction by ‘rebels’ no longer has to be justified since it has been normalized by most of the world’s media. ‘Revolution’ and fighting against the ‘brutal dictator’ and the ‘Alawite regime’ were slogans that have served their purpose. However, to maintain the status quo of war and terror, whatever the Syrian government does must be either ignored or completely discredited, and the regime demonized, still.

Now, even more radical groups are being sent into Syria, and their crimes still shock.

I have met survivors from Adra, a large industrial town on the outskirts of Damascus, which used to be an oasis of tranquility and productivity. It’s ‘the working Adra’, a town of workers and government employees. The relative calm of Adra was shattered when it was invaded by armed gangs in December 2013.

Middle-aged men who escaped said, “Even in the movies, we had never seen such scary people. It seemed that they were on drugs or under some kind of evil influence.”

It is not just one atrocity here and there in Syria which is occurring. The eating of the liver of a soldier last year was not an aberration. In massacres in the villages in Lattakia last year, there was evidence of the roasting and eating of a child. More recently, in Adra, workers in a bakery were thrown into the bakery oven. Those people were not government agents. They were murdered simply because they had chosen to live a normal life and not get involved in politics.

Before the invasion of Adra, many displaced people from besieged areas around Damascus had found sanctuary in this workers’ town. Some of them were activists who spent time making lists of the ‘non-tolerated people’ in Adra: the Alawites, the Christians, the Druze and government employees. They had names and addresses, and so when the militias took over the city they were able to efficiently perpetrate a discriminatory genocide.

Part of Adra remains under the control of the ‘rebels’. More than 2,500 people have been abducted. No one knows their fate, however, according to reliable reports, scores of women taken hostage are raped and exhibited naked on balconies every day. Children have been thrown from roofs as the army has advanced.

I have heard many testimonies of women inside areas held by rebels in different parts of Syria. Many women have been raped and abused. There is nothing normal about war. A mentality can develop which distorts our natural compassion and sense of justice. In these rebel areas, men are encouraged to believe they are ‘lords’ and that whatever they desire can be theirs. When they utter the shaharda – in other words, they say three times “Allah is great” – everything can be theirs: a car, a building, a woman, a child.

Is this to be the future for Syria?

Before the siege of Adra, there were many other invasions and sieges, such as that of the old historic city of Homs, where 130,000 Christians used to live. Now almost all the Christians are displaced and their shrines destroyed. This part of Homs was not a military target. It was not taken or invaded after a big battle. There was no oppression in the streets. In February 2012 there was an invasion and today it is a big political story. Fighters say, ‘We are besieged and we are dying’, but in reality, the negotiations of the United Nations have become a safe way for the invading forces to flee.

In Syria, there are generally two kinds of fighters. Firstly, there are Syrian fighters who took up arms either to protect their families from the perceived or real oppression of some intelligence services; or to simply survive. Those people are willing to enter into negotiations. However, the second category of fighter works under the international coalition that is intent on dismantling Syria. As more and more Syrian rebels are noting, these international forces and the fighters sponsored by them show neither care for Syria nor care for the well-being of the majority of Syrian people.

On the other side, as the violence and strife deepens, corruption deepens. It is the human story of war. There are terrible betrayals for money or out of fear.

However, parallel with these atrocities, defilement, betrayal, and corruption, you have the reconciliation process.

The reconciliation process is carried out by good-willed people at the grass-roots level.

One result of this process is that many local rebels are now convinced that this ‘revolution’ was a Trojan horse, one used by the international alliance to dismantle Syria. Those rebels brought back into the national fold are also the good fuel, the good incentive of this dynamic for reconciliation and peace.

And despite the warlords on the ground who will do anything to prevent reconciliation and peace, this initiative is succeeding. It will be a reality that is difficult to hide outside Syria. Reconciliation is a breakthrough in this darkness and confusion and it continues to gain momentum despite the efforts to create a de facto partitioning of Syria along the lines of Iraq and Libya.

One reason for its success is because Arab tribes form more than 65% of the Syrian population, and a tribe can be composed of 100,000 or two million people, so it becomes a matter of security for the tribe not to have any internal battles. Therefore, tribal leaders willingly enter the reconciliation process for the sake of both their tribe and for the country, as Syrians are generally very nationalistic.

A perspective from Syria today is that there is a New World Order which wants to destroy the nation state. The destruction of the state may be seen to benefit finance, industry or trade control. But the Syrian people believe in their nation; it is the source of their security, their wealth, and their peace.

So the time is ripe for an inter-Syrian reconciliation. To preserve Syria, it’s time for the sponsoring of the foreign fighters to stop.

But the battle is a huge one for the people of Syria. They face the hypocrisy of the international community, including the United Nations, the Human Rights Council and some NGOs. The telling of the story of Syria has most often been far from the reality; virtual reports have been created. And despite some improvements, the reality is often still distorted, particularly the overall reality.

Much of the discourse about Syria has been shaped by the external opposition, mostly composed of people who have not lived in Syria for 30 years. They are effectively waging a war against their version of Syria based on memories dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. The faded memories of these people and their grudges are exploited by forces that wish to destroy another Middle Eastern country.

In contrast to this external opposition and their skewed picture of 21st century Syria, there exists an internal opposition to the Baath Party. This opposition is made up of formal political parties, some in government, some not; as well as informal groups. Prominent members of the internal opposition have experience of regime prisons, however, they maintain a non-violent path toward political change. This opposition is ignored by the west. To respect it would require governments to back down from their support for a violent ‘revolution’ and the destruction of Syria. In the western media, in UN reports and among NGOs, the pretence is maintained that by definition the opposition in Syria is militarized. This is despite there being hundreds of warlords using terror as a weapon of war making up this western sanctioned Syrian ‘opposition’. The pursuit of war demands black and white depictions of compex situations.

Today, what is happening in Syria has nothing to do with a fight against an oppressive regime. Yesterday, we heard the views of people coming in the south of Syria. They say, ‘we would prefer the jail of the government to the normal way of life imposed on us by the rebels’. Every day you have people who are raped, who are cut into pieces, who are beheaded. And the children, instead of attending school, are recruited to commit terror. It is a new form of society: a terrorist society.

How can there be peace in Syria if the horrors and those who commit them, whether they are ‘moderate’ fighters or Al-Qaeda terrorists, are not condemned? If those who support them are not condemned? As long as the reality is concealed, the death and destruction will continue.

There is a fear that the ancient citadel in the heart of Aleppo will be destroyed. As has happened in Iraq, it seems the green light has been given to destroy the cultural and archeological resources of Syria. The memory of our human history in this ancient country, the relics which have been reminders over millennia of our humanity, may be lost forever.

In the 21st century, people are leaving Great Britain and Australia for Syria because they strive for jihad. But this by itself is not the reason they eventually find themselves in Syria. There is a tight network supporting these fighters. Thus, it could be argued there is hypocrisy in the claim that they will be arrested when they come back. They are not supposed to return. They are in Syria to destroy it and are expected to stay until the destruction is complete.

Yesterday, we were told by local fighters, “If the president gives us bread and electricity, we will surrender because we can work.” But it was not the president who cut the electricity. It is the militias who cut the electricity to deprive the civilian population from a way of gaining a living for their family. It is one way of dragooning ordinary people into the battle.

This is an international conflict occurring in Syria. It is not a civil war. Saudi Arabia commits millions of dollars to keeping the conflict alive so terror reigns and the country burns with the blessing of the United States, Turkey, France and other allies. Israel openly provides medical aid to wounded fighters and sends them back to fight the regular Syrian army. It is a dirty war. Even though Russia and Iran say they want to help Syria, in the end, each country will work for its own interests. And their interests will not always suit the interests of Syria. Therefore, there must be an end to any foreign interference inside Syria. Syrian people must be left to deal with their own matters in a non-violent way.

It is the reconciliation movement which can help bring peace to Syria, if the world permits it.